to end, we will never stop working to do right by you and your families. good day, i'm andrea mitchell in washington where we begin with those breaking news from the white house, president obama today accepting the resignation of embattled veterans affair secretary telling the nation what happened during their face to face meeting in the oval office. >> rick's commitment to our veterans is unquestioned and his service to his country is exem playerry. i'm grateful for his service as are many veterans across the country. he has worked hard to investigate and identify the problems with access to care. but as he told me this morning, the va needs new leadership to

address them. he does not want to be a distraction because his priority is to fix the problem and make sure our vets are getting the care they need. that was rick's judgment on behalf of his fellow veterans and i agree. >> joining me now is derrick bennett, msnbc analyst jack jacobs joining me by phone. first to you, is this the first step or right move? >> we certainly applaud the president for making an aggressive step in replacing general shinseki and applaud shinseki's five deck atds of service to this country. this is not about a single individual or one leader. it's a systemic problem across the veterans affairs that we call on the president to ensure he correct. this is not a scapegoating issue going to be wiped away once this is over. >> what do we know about his

replacement, the acting secretary and whether or not he's going to be able to manage this enormous problem? he's only been there for a couple of months. >> deputy secretary gibson is a dedicated national servient and served in the uso and private sector experience. he's got a reform mind set but only been there for a few months. what's important is the team going to be put in place around him, as well as the secretary that the president says he's going to announce shortly. >> colonel jack, on the phone you know general shinseki very well, was this unavoidable at this stage? >> i think it was. it was a series of things that made it absolutely impossible for the president to carry on with shinseki. the report -- all of the problems were not isolated in one spot, they are widespread, followed by democrats abandoning

shinseki and the president for keeping him on. that on top of a large number of veterans saying same thing made it difficult if not impossible for the president to keep him on. that's why he's gone. i know -- i also know sloan gibson, he's a very talented guy, but he is going to have to for the interim period at least, going to have to deal with the dysfunction of the structure itself and unless he has the capability to hire and fire, to demand more money, to reorganize the whole place himself, he's not going to do a whole lot better in the interim. whoever replaces shinseki and gibson would be nuts to take the job without widespread authority to do what he thinks is necessary in order to reorganize the place and make it so that it supports our veterans and that's going to require somebody who can deal with the congress because at the end of the day, the congress is where all of the power lies to reorganize and

organize and provide the funds in order for all of the stuff to make what happens happen. and at the end of the day, this is a long-term problem that's not going to be solved by replacing one or a dozen people. >> in fact, general shinseki was out at the veterans organization today and that's where he first acknowledged -- apologized deeply and acknowledged how widespread the problem is. let me play that for you. >> i can't explain the lack of integrity amongst some of the leaders of our health care facilities. this is something i rarely encountered during 38 years in uniform. and so i will not defend it because it is indefensible. but i can take responsibility for it. and i do. i also know this, that leadership and integrity

problems can and must be fixed and now. [ applause ] >> when you hear general shinseki, there is a personal side. we know him as the truth teller who went up against donald rumsfeld in the run-up to the iraq war and only man in uniform willing to go public to congress and say we needed more troops than the white house was recommending. he's had a stellar career, is the va too complex and too bogged down in scandal and in confidence in the administrative level, not at the care giving level for this to be fixed by any new team, especially going into the second term of an administration? >> it's certainly going to be tough in the last quarter of this administration. colonel jacobs is exactly right. whoever takes it job and the team to put around them has to have a mandate to break the bureaucracy and enact change. i saw the secretary less than 24

hours ago and he was very sincere about his desire to reform the department. at the end of the day, fundamentally the first order of question is since the department has lost the trust and confidence of the veterans and the department as a system has clearly not been able to follow directions of the secretary, what's going to be different in the coming weeks and months for whoever, whether it's deputy secretary gibson or quite frankly the president so they get independent verification so they can actually fix. it is a systemic problem that has to be addressed by all sides. >> thank you both very much. joining me now by phone from phoenix is someone who knows all too well the real price of this scandal. sally barnes green lost her father-in-law thomas breen, only 70 years old and navy veteran and died of cancer last november. he blames his death on the va hospital in phoenix, at least the family does. thanks for joining us, tell me what happened. it was a pretty stark reality

for you trying to get primary care for your father-in-law and it came too late. >> thank you for having me. yes, i hold responsible the va and presidency and everybody involved. it doesn't appease me at all in the least that they fired everybody. no. they need to fix the va now because people are still in the emergency room suffering try to get an appointment. that's one. two, firing them, yes. okay, but what about the criminal charges of the neglect, lack of care and poor quality of care and mistreatment? he wasn't an animal. he had a gallon blood that was the witness of what was going on. he stated these words, help me, i used to have cancer in brooklyn and fixed that problem. i'm scared. help me. what do they do? they dismiss him like an animal. he served his country. you're going to tell me he's not a human being, a doctor, is in

if for money? the government knew before dad was born all of the problems. the president swore oath and doctors swore oath and all lied because it is just about money. they knew about this problem, this systemic problem in the system. they are not going to lie because i'm proof. and 1,000 million others are proof. where is the proof of could they bring my pop back? no. no money in the world is going to make me happy and the government stinks. no matter who they put in, you really think the only reason why they are doing this because i made it publicized, me and dr. foot. that's a real doctor. dr. foot is the real doctor. joe arpaio gives services to his in jail better than va did. >> you're referring to the sheriff there in phoenix. you received a call finally

giving you the appointment for your father-in-law and it came too late. >> yes, december 6th they called me up and said, hi, may we speak to thomas breen. who's calling? they said the va hospital, well, i'm his caretaker and i can medically -- power of attorney, whatever have you, i can speak to you. we're trying to set up an appointment. i flipped up. he was dead already. he was dead already. here's for the whole news, you know what's really sad? the saddest thing is after all of this, on the news, channel 10, andrew came to my house and put on the news a few months ago, i called the va to have memorial services done for pop because by right he gets a free memorial because he served. they denied him. and i didn't have a choice but to bring dad to the biological

resource center. guess what happened there while pop was there? fbi closed them down four or five days. i don't know even know if i have pop in the box and i still can't get an answer from the general affair. this stems out to the whole government should be fired and make a change, the change is get rid of the old and in with the new. they have millions of dollars in play. but if the president would stop helping the countries that he's having war at, this wouldn't be. he has the money. he has the money. >> thank you very much for joining us and we are of course sorry for the loss of all of the patients and the families involved. you can just feel the pain that this has all caused. joining me now for more, chris cillizza, managing editor of

postpolitics.com and susan page and "washington post" ann gearan and white house correspondent kristen welker. kristen, first to you, the president moved today but it seemed very reluctant. there was a personal connection there. and just quickly, why did this finally reach critical mass the boiling point, however you want to describe it today? >> that's a great question. you're vutly right. you you can hear the president's respect for secretary shinseki when he made those comments. i'm told that after he got that preliminary ig report that the situation just became untenable and president and other top officials were stunned by how widespread the misconduct is within the va. and the fact that secretary shinseki who had said he wasn't aware of how widespread it was, he said of course that he thought these were isolated incidents. you heard secretary shinseki

himself said he was misled about that. that was one of the key factors and then you have this course of mounting voices from capitol hill, more than 100 lawmakers, including a fifth of senate democrats, calling for secretary shinseki to resign. i think it was too much pressure and that is what ultimately led to the developments of the day. andrea? >> ann, you covered the pentagon and know the culture before you covered the state department and now wider beats as the white house as well. you've seen it from all angles in washington. was the pentagon reluctant to also make this change or was it just the white house and personal loyalty that obama felt to shinseki? >> you heard the president's respect and true appreciation for the decades of service of general shinseki, the pentagon is a separate chain of command from the va and it's a constant

source of frustration at the pentagon, the people who serve then -- then leave the service have trouble once they get to the va and all gets lumped together as it's the military's fault although the pentagon is constantly saying it isn't our fault. >> susan page, politically, this is the biggest political problem that the president has faced. this is far more serious than a lot of so-called scandals that have popped up from time to time in the last couple of months. >> i agree with you, this is much more perilous for the president politically, benghazi they can dismiss that as a partisan battle and the affordable care act, on this he had bipartisan outrage and senior democrats saying shinseki had to go. why is this different from kathleen sebelius? this is a different problem for the white house and more serious problem and one that has really the potential to be a big problem for democrats running in november. >> i want to ask you ann, you're

going to be covering hillary clinton from the "washington post." how -- the clinton people are now parcelling out and now today the biggest get of her new book hard choices, which is the benghazi chapter. and this is really pretty stunning example of how they are trying to frame the debate and preempt the debate but there can't be a better indication that she is in fact running for president than putting out the benghazi chapter in advance. >> absolutely. if there was any doubt in anyone's mind that the book rollout is related to a likely presidential run, this is all the proof you need. anyone associated with clinton and potential run knows that benghazi is, if not her biggest weakness, certainly among those that she's going to be hit with the hardest by republicans. and so they are giving democrats a playbook, a script for how to counter republican attacks over

the benghazi incident of 18 months ago. >> and there's an excerpt from the book "hard choices" clinton writes those who exploit this tragedy over and over as a political tool minimize the sacrifice of those who saved our country. she says benghazi under attack casting doubt on motivations of congressional republicans who have continued to investigate the attacks, including with an upcoming house select committee, she continues i will not be part of a political slug fest on the backs of dead americans. it's plain wrong and unworthy of our great country. those who insist on politics dzizing will have to do so without me. >> let me just echo my colleague anne's thoughts. it could have been titled how to talk about hillary clinton in benghazi. that's essentially what's being laid out here. i won't plit size this on the back of those who lost their lives. this is essentially a witch

hunt. this is sort of the playbook by which hillary clinton and her -- i'm going to say campaign in waiting until i'm proven elsewise. how they will respond and how they would like both allies and other democrats to respond to questions about this. they know as anne pointed out, this is going to be something that she's going to have to deal with further. they want to make sure everyone is single literally from the same book. >> and susan page, traditionally on a big book like this, there's the prime time interview and morning television interview and the sunday talk show interview and obviously radio and newspaper interviews, but this is very different. they are sort of doling it out bits by bit trying to shape the narrative. >> on a friday we hear about the benghazi chapter -- >> good point. >> what cj craig called the take

out the trash day. >> it shows they know what they are doing, right? they are going to get a lot of bites of the apple off this book. by the time the big interviews come around, they would like to have the issue be one that's chewed over enough that it no longer seems quite so important or central to what these key interviews will be about the book. >> thank you, susan page and anne gearan and chris cillizza and kristen welker. much more ahead as we continue to bring the latest developments on what's heads for the va after secretary shinseki's resignation. the paper trail, edward snowden claiming he did try to blow the whistle to his bosses. could he stands trial on espionage charges. we'll talk to daniel elsburg right here only on ns nbc.

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. edward snowden is holding firm to his claim that he did blow the whistle about nsa abuses before the leaks. leaving a paper trail to prove it. his interview with brian williams. >> not just officially, in writing through e-mail, to these offices and these individuals, but to my supervisors, to my colleagues, in more than one office. >> under pressure the nsa after a year released one e-mail, the sole e-mail it found from snowden to nsa lawyers but snowden has fired back about that release telling the "washington post" today the picture painted by the nsa is incomplete. i'm joined now by jerry mabash who served as chief of staff at the department of defense and also worked on the hill drafting the fisa reforms to that law.

let's talk about his communication to the "washington post." he said it's incomplete, that they -- the white house should pressure the nsa to go to his colleagues and former colleagues and go to the compliance office, that there is in fact a paper trail. >> it looks like the nsa has done an exhaustive service and put out the single e-mail. let's look at that e-mail. he wrote in april after attending a training seminar on how to protect civil liberties he wrote a question to the general counsel's office saying between executive orders and laws, which have precedence between defense and intelligence regulations, which have greater precedence? that's a question of a first year law student, not a question of a whistle blower, doesn't raise any concerns about any particular surveillance or program. if he now says that that's not the whole record, let him put it out. >> let me stipulate that his -- this e-mail that the nsa put out is a query you would have in a

first year law class. >> no whistle blowing. let's stipulate that. >> i'm not a lawyer and don't even play one on tv. here's what he then said to the "washington post." the ns a's new discovery of written contact between me and its lawyers after more than a year of denying any such contact existed raises serious concerns. if the white house is interested in the whole truth rather than the nsa clearly tailored and incomplete leak, it will require the nsa to ask my former colleagues and management and senior leadership team whether at any time i at any time raised concerns about the nsa's improper and at times unconstitutional surveillance activities. it will not take long to receive an answer. >> time out. this strains kred you'llty. he took 1.7 million documents, highly classified and put them on four encrypted laptops and made a run for china and ultimately moscow. he couldn't have taken his own

correspondence allegedly whistle blowing? where is he? why didn't he produce documentation that he engaged written whistle did blowing. yet, he doesn't produce it. >> he also, by the way to clarify says he didn't take anything with him to moscow. >> he's turned over millions of documents and to our knowledge he has not turned over anything -- i would think again if he had a claim that he engaged in whistle blowing about a particular program or issue, he should make it clear. no one on the congressional intelligence committees heard from edward snowden and no record he communicated with anyone up higher in the chain. as chief of staff at the pentagon and interacting with general shinseki, what about what happened today? >> he's a great american patriot. his service to our country is

almost unparalleled but this was an important step. it really signaled that we need new leadership. i think it's necessary but not sufficient, right, andrea? it's going to be necessary for there to be a change of leadership and president reluctantly accepted the resignation but it's not going sufficient to change problems at the va. one thing that was interesting, the va for many months was focused on a scandal, which was the backlog of benefits being provided to our veterans. at the end of the day, that wasn't the scandal that came to top all of the secretary. it was the scandal of wait times for medical appointments. in many senses i think people were focused on the wrong things. we'll have to tackle that issue and the backlog of benefits and people transitioning from the pentagon to the va. the va needs to modernize and it's a big hard road ahead. >> thank you so much, jeremy bash. returning to the snowden issue, john kerry told chuck todd, if

edward snowden were really a patriot, he would have done what daniel elsburg had done, stand trial and defend himself. >> if this man is a patriot, he should stay in the united states and make his case. patriots don't go to russia. they don't seek asylum in cuba and venezuela. they fight their cause here. there are many a patriot. you can go back to the pentagon papers with dan ellsberg and others who stood and went to the court system of america and made their case. edward snowden is a coward, he is a traitor and he has betrayed his country and if he wants to come home tomorrow to face the music, he can do so. >> well, today the famed pentagon papers whistleblower dan ellsberg is sounding off about kerry's comments. he joins me now from california. mr. ellsberg, thank you very much. tell me why you responded so strongly to what secretary kerry

had to say? >> secretary kerry was once a hero of mine along with a lot of other people, did a very credible role in front of the foreign relations committee and denouncing war crimes, and asking the question who wants to be the last man to fight in -- to die for a mistake, let me correct that. who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake. i was thinking of that only yesterday as i saw the headline that the president was keeping almost 10,000 men almost two more years or two and a half more years in afghanistan. i was wondering how secretary of state kerry would address that question today. unfortunately, his statements on snowden have diminished his stat tour even further and it has fallen in recent years in a

number of ways. for him to characterize mr. snowden whom i regard as i american hero and very great patpat patriot, as a coward and someone who betrayed his country is a despicable statement. >> tell me why you disagree with the argument he should have stayed, gone through the chain of command and faced the music, that he should -- >> there are several parts to that. at first chain of command, snowden had seen what had happened to every person who went through the chain of command in nsa. highest officials in nsa, technical people, ed loomis, tom drake, all gone to the inspector general and for that had their careers ruined, several resigned, all of them raided by the fbi and lost computers on suspicion that they had given the truth of what they were saying to the ig, inspector

general and to congress about the nsa criminal listening in without a warrant on hundreds of millions of americans. they had told that but not to the press as they should have i must say. they had gone to the congress and to the ig exactly as kerry has asked him to do and for that they were identified as trouble makers and potential whistle blowers were suspected of given the information to "the times", which i wish they had done and he think they wish they had done. they lost their jobs. snowden saw all of that. he's a fugitive not as secretary kerry says from justice. edward snowden is a fugitive from injustice. he has no chance of getting a fair just trial in this country any more than any of the other whistleblowers who have faced prosecution more than i did 40 years and more. >> let me go into that because i

want to ask you one of the things that snowden said is he wouldn't be able to defend himself and couldn't speak to motivations because it would be ruled by a judge as it was in your case in that trial reviewed as not sponsor as to why you took the pentagon papers and downloaded these documents. >> i'm sorry i can't see here. am i talking to andrea mitchell? >> yes, sir. >> i'm sorry -- >> i didn't know you didn't have return video. >> i remember your face which i recognized 43 years ago on this day i suspect on my first press conference after i came up underground after delivering the top secret pentagon papers to 19 different newspapers. and in that first press conference, your face stood out because you're already 43 years ago the most notable journalist significant journalist in this, so congratulations. >> thank you, sir. >> still being at it. at that time i and my lawyers

both assumed there must be some law i had broken and i expected to go to prison for it since i had given out more top secrets than anyone ever before me. i assume that the espionage act and other whistle blowers, seven under obama, three more -- i'm sorry, twice as many or more than the three that were indicted before obama under these charges of which i was the first. i assumed that the justice department knew what he was doing and with all of the leaks that occurred day after day, they must have used this act many times before, not on as many disclosures as i had made. that was mistaken. it took a year to discover that this country doesn't have an official secret to the kind britain has and most countries do have because we have a first amendment, which they do have, which procluds an act that criminalizes any and all release

of documents that the government has marked secret or top secret. that such an act has been rejected many times when administrations have proposed it on the grounds it was unconstitutional. one time they passed it in october and november of 2000 and president clinton vetoed that on the grounds it was unconstitutional. that is the espionage act now that president obama has used seven times as if it were an official secrets act which it's very clear congress did not mean it to be and rejected that use. and the supreme court has never to this day ruled on it. i'm saying my case was really, didn't know it at the first, unjust from beginning to end. i should never have faced those charges as the law clerk to my own justice in this case, david tryman, later a distinguished law professor, ruled -- advised the judge at the time, that our

motion that this was unconstitutional was correct. he took that under advisement. in the end i did receive justice but no thanks to nixon or the prosecutor. it was the revelation by john dean and others and by a leak that justice had himself been offered an on instruction of justice, the ahead of the fbi, if he ended the case in a timely fashion and it was implied appropriately with me in prison. it was also the revelation of crimes by the white house including and going into my doctor's office using the cia against me numerous times, attempting to assault me or incapacity tate me. all of those are now regarded at legal under this administration with the first informally and then with the help of congress. so a president wouldn't be facing impeachment as nixon did if he did all of those things. i was not allowed even then, even before that ruling by the

judge, to give -- to answer the question, why did i copy the p pentagon papers? i was not able to put out a defense at all in fact under those terms. it was ruled as irrelevant that motive is not relevancy and therefore i could say nothing about the fact that these secrets had been improperly withheld all of this time. and revealing them now caused no harm. i couldn't say any evidence to that effect and neither has anyone else prosecuted under these terms since. that's such as tom drake and others, that's what snowden would be facing. he would be facing a jail cell from the time he step off the plane here, the plane that john kerry offered him. he would be stepping into handcuffs and he would probably never get out unless the he is pea onnage act is changed to allow a defense of public benefit, public interest in which these matters could be

brought up. that's what congress should do and even before that the supreme court should at last rule on those aspects that they are unconstitutional, violations of the first amendment and freedom of press. >> we are going to have to leave it there. it is a fascinating parallel. thank you so much for bringing it full circle. daniel ellsberg, brought up by snowden and then ugsed another example -- as another example by kerry and now your response, thank you so much. a programming note, you can watch the entire nbc news exclusive, the interview inside the mind of edward snowden tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern here on msnbc. coming up next, more on the fallout at the va after secretary shinseki's resignation. congressman, member of the house veterans affairs committee joining me next. ♪

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joining me now, member of the house veterans affairs committee. what is your reaction to the resignation, forced resignation of secretary shinseki. >> i think it's long overdue. the president was reluctant to accept the resignation with all of the problems with the scandal, i believe at the va and throughout other agencies there's a culture of nonaccountability and i think it's instructive that it was a -- that the president actually gave mr. shinseki a ver balance presidential medal of honor. there's pretty strong solutions that we need to implement immediately to fix this problem. >> would one of solutions be more money or is it a management issue or combination? >> i served on the va committee for three years and money has never been a problem. the bureaucrats and top level

appointees have said we don't need more money. it's a cultural problem. we need an independent reform commission to look at changes from folks outside the bureaucracy, number one and number two, i think the president needs to implement immediately a veteran choice program to allow veterans awaiting care and other veterans that would like to choose to go outside the va system. those two reforms would go a long ways toward solving the problem. >> and at this stage, do you think the deputy secretary will be able to accomplish anything? >> in the last nine years, nearly a decade, congress has received 35 different reports on this problem from the office of inspector general in the va and gao about these problems. 35 reports over nearly a decade, i have my concerns whether someone from inside the bureaucracy, inside this administration or any administration, we need an independent reform commission, folks that can come in and take a look at it from the outside

and say this is what we need to do to make sure veterans are taken care of instead of worrying what 331,000 bureaucrats think at the va. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> ahead right here on "andrea mitchell reports," npr steve inescape joins me next. we'll be right back.

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let's go to capitol hill where kelley o'donnell is asking john boehner to react to the shinseki resignation. >> about what's happening at the va and the treatment that is being denied to our veterans. these people put their lives on

the line for our country and they deserve better, much better than they are getting today. >> mr. speaker, in her new book, hillary clinton writes this about republicans and benghazi, those who exploit this tragedy over and over as a political tool minimize the sacrifice of those who served our country. is she right? are republicans politicsizing facts? >> this is about one issue and one issue only, that is about getting the truth for the american people and the truth about what happened in the benghazi for the four families who lost loved ones there. that's why we created a select committee, it's about getting to truth. we've been asking for documents now for 18 months. why does the administration refuse to turn over the documents? why do they refuse to tell the american people the truth about what happened? >> speaker boehner, other than urging the senate to pass your bill. >> it's been a busy week this

week, the president restating his foreign policies at west point in the commencement including a new shift towards expanding a new counterterrorism budget, $5 billion if the money comes through. after that speech he sat down with npr's steve inskeep. they made remistakes not by showing too much restraint but by underestimating how challenging the environment is out there. not thinking through consequences. a lot of what you want to do is advance the ball on human rights, advance the ball on national security and advance the ball on energy independence, to put the ball in play. every once in a while, a pitch is going to come right over home plate that you can knock out for a home run. but you don't swing at every pitch. >> you don't swing at every

pitch. you know, that has steve inskeep, that is creating some blowback. >> the sports reaction -- the president was trying to say what he was doing in the world. but i think he's done a little better job of saying what he doesn't want to do than what he does. he doesn't want to go to the scheme of whole scale war. wants to advance foreign policy in little ways when he can. there's been mixed commentary. there's some people fiercely critical, republicans especially, but aaron david miller wrote an interesting article, this visionless foreign policy that the president is pursuing seems to be working. maybe it's right for this moment, he said. >> you interviewed the president six times, four -- >> four times since he took office. >> what changes do you note?

>> the hair is a little bit grayer, he remains very relaxed and calm and remains a careful talker. he parss words very carefully and that makes it a struggle to know where he stands. and that's what i think some of his critics are struggling with right now. for example we're wondering about syria, is he ready to aid the rebels more in syria or not? we got mixed messages from the administration and president on that. >> he was talking about syria. let's play a little bit of that from your interview. >> ultimately i did not think then and still do not believe that american military actions can resolve what is increasingly a sectarian civil war. and i also believe that ultimately the only way you're going to get a resolution that works for the syrian people in the region is going -- is going to require some sort of political accommodation between the various groups there. >> a lot of criticism that he

blinked, that he did not go ahead and authorize air strikes last labor day weekend as secretary kerry said he was about to do over chemical weapons. >> and republicans still talk about that. we had bob corker on the program this morning and he was talking about not pulling the trigger there. the president arguing it must be a political solution. then the question is, can you nudge it in some way and use the rebels to do that, or do you let that happen and worry more about terrorists in syria, which seems to be the way the administration is pointing with the counter terror fund you mentioned. >> what was the reaction? i remember in 2009 he announced the surge at west point he got a very warm, very warm reception. >> there was a warm reception this time when he had a line about saying this may be the first class at west point in more than a decade since 9/11 where nobody is going to go to afghanistan. that was an applause line. it is a different moment in history. >> here he's facing all of these

problems, the administration of health care that led to the replacement of secretary sebelius and now today eric shinseki. he was reluctant to do this. >> clearly so. he said he was reluctant. he spoke secretary shinseki by first name, called him rick as you'll recall. he was accepting shinseki's resignation because of shinseki's judgment, saying he still trust this man and trusts his judgment. but the political demands of the situation would not allow him to say. given he was accepting the resignation under terrible circumstances, it was a remarkably warm statement the president made toward him. >> it does speak to the confidence issue the republicans and other critics and a lot of democratic advisers as well have been complaining that this white house has -- is slow to get its arms around management problems. >> this is a white house that

thinks a lot. that thinks long and hard. we see that with syria and a lot of different issues and agencies that we're investigating. we're looking at the border patrol, for example. you can go right across. >> quite a trip to to mexico along the mexican border, thank you very much. we look at agencies like that and there are questions about their behavior and questions about transparency and questions that are quite similar to the questions being raised at the va actually. and we don't have answers yet. the administration is committed to greater transparency in the case of that agency. but we don't know how far that's going to go and where it's going to lead. that is constantly a complaint about an administration, any administration even this one which is held so many decisions so closely at the white house. >> we've been of course focusing so intently on brian williams interview with edward snowden and seeing reaction right and left and certainly from younger people who believe so passionately as we all do in

internet freedom that the tradeoff, they don't have the right balance between personal privacy and national security. >> and for everybody i think it's been an educational process that it is a balance. it can't be all one thing. it can't be the other. where do you strike the balance in the middle of the one thing that i think is interesting, andrea mitchell, we had a chance to talk with ed green wall and ask him, have you been able to identify anyone who was actually harmed by what the nsa was doing? and at that time he was unable to identify anyone although he said he was working on. maybe we'll find out someone who was harmed. it's a strange situation where the nsa has been unable to prove their caught terrorists using the controversial methods and critics unable to prove if anyone was harmed. we have an immense several kinds of potential danger but don't know what the stakes are, do we? >> no, we don't. it's what makes it so

fascinating. great talking to you. >> you too, andrea. >> that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." monday on the show, jason chaffetz among others. "ronan farrow daily" joins us right next. if i can impart one lesson to a new business owner, it would be one thing i've learned is my philosophy is real simple american express open forum is an on-line community, that helps our members connect and share ideas to make smart business decisions. if you mess up, fess up.

be your partners best partner. we built it for our members, but it's open for everyone. there's not one way to do something. no details too small. american express open forum. this is what membership is. this is what membership does.

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>> the second richest sale in u.s. sports history. >> i got a call asking if i might be able to come here and do an event for joni, she didn't sit home and needle point. >> i grew up castrating hogs on an iowa farm. we're going to make them squeal, right? >> i think i know this. >> correct. >> correct. >> car bore guy ya. >> i totally know it. >> y-a -- what? [ applause ] >> the wait is over at least for veterans and more than 100 members of congress, waiting to see va secretary eric shinseki out of a job. president obama